The Arrangement by Mary Balogh
10
Three of Sophia’s dresses had been delivered early in the evening, her wedding dress among them.
She was wearing it now, the following morning, and she was peering timidly into the full-length mirror that had been squeezed into her dressing room, where Lady Trentham’s maid had just finished with her. She looked—different. She did not look like a boy. Or a waif. Or a scarecrow.
The dress was a pale sage green, almost silver. It was a shade that brought out the red in her hair. It was simply styled, its high waist caught beneath her bosom with a matching sash, the skirt falling in soft folds almost to her ankles, where it ended in two small flounces. The neckline was low but modestly so, the puffed sleeves trimmed with miniature versions of the hemline flounces. She wore dull gold slippers and gloves. A small-brimmed straw bonnet trimmed with tiny white rosebuds lay on the dressing table, ready to don.
Perhaps the most remarkable item of her wedding outfit was something that could not be seen—her stays. She had never worn them before. They were not uncomfortable, as she had expected they would be. Not yet, anyway. Lady Trentham and Lady Kilbourne had together persuaded her into trying them, and when she had them laced beneath the dress and the dressmaker had pinned it to fit her, she had known why they had done so. She knew it now. Somehow, despite her basic shapelessness and despite the straight lines of the skirt, the stays gave her a waist and hips. Most of all, though, they gave her something of a bosom, pushing her breasts upward as they did. It was not a very impressive bosom. But at least it was a bosom, and for once in her life she thought she looked like a woman.
These stays might, of course, prove to be uncomfortably warm. It was going to be a hot day, Lord Trentham had reported at breakfast, frowning fiercely at Sophia and then surprising her with a grin.
“It is a good thing you never thought of earning your living as a hairdresser, lass,” he had said. “Your hair looked like an uncultivated bush that had passed through a hurricane this time yesterday.”
“Oh, my dear Hugo!”
“Hu-go!”
Mrs. and Miss Emes had spoken simultaneously.
“Which is merely Hugo’s way of saying, Miss Fry,” Lady Trentham had said, “that your hair looks very fetching today.”
“That is exactly what I said,” he had agreed, beaming down at his wife.
She would do, Sophia decided now, gazing wistfully at her image. Indeed, if she abandoned all modesty for a moment in the privacy of her own mind, she thought she would do very nicely indeed. She smiled.
And reality swept over her. This was her wedding day. To Viscount Darleigh. Vincent. She had seen him briefly at dinner the evening before last, before Lord Trentham took him to Stanbrook House. And she had seen him briefly for tea yesterday afternoon. Neither time had she been alone with him. Neither time had they had any sort of private conversation with each other. It felt a long time since they had talked.
He felt like a stranger.
He was a stranger.
For a moment panic threatened. She should never have agreed to this. Just think of his friends—Lord and Lady Trentham, the Duke of Stanbrook, Lady Barclay, Viscount Ponsonby, the Earl of Somewhere she could not remember. All of them titled and from a world far different from her own. Later today she would be expected to meet them. She had agreed to a wedding breakfast here.
She ought not to do it. It was not fair to him.
But he had once been just Vincent Hunt, she reminded herself, who had been educated at a village school by his father, the schoolmaster, and whose playmates had been the other children of the village. She was the granddaughter and the niece of a baronet. She was a lady.
And then she wished she had not thought of who she was. She had family. There was Sir Terrence Fry, whom she had never met, and there were Aunt Martha and Sir Clarence and Henrietta. None of whom were here for her—just as none of Lord Darleigh’s family were here. But in their case it was simply because they did not know about the wedding. But her uncle did not know either. If he did know, would he come? He was probably not even in England.
She gave her head a shake. Almost at the same moment, she was distracted by a knock on the door. It opened to reveal Lady Trentham, Miss Emes behind her, peering over her shoulder.
“Oh, Miss Fry,” the latter cried, “how pretty you look. Do turn and let us see you properly.”
Sophia turned obediently and looked anxiously at them.
“Will I do?” she asked.
Lady Trentham smiled slowly.
“I keep remembering Mr. Welland’s saying that if you keep your hair short you will look like a cherub,” she said. “He was right. You look like a small, dainty fairy creature, Miss Fry. You will do very well indeed.”
“Shall I assist you with your bonnet?” Miss Emes asked, coming inside the dressing room. “You do not want to squash your curls entirely, do you? Oh, how pretty and dainty it is. There. It suits you perfectly. Have I tied the bow at the right angle, Gwen?”
“Poor Hugo will be wearing a path in the tiles of the hallway if we do not go down soon,” Lady Trentham said. “Apparently he was very nervous on our wedding day just four days ago, and now he is nervous all over again because he has the responsibility of giving you over into the care of that rogue and rascal Lord Darleigh—his words, not mine. And spoken purely in fun, of course. But he does feel his responsibility since you have no family to stand with you. Shall we go down?”
Her words, unconsciously spoken, brought back that pang of loneliness and abandonment again. But it was easy enough to brush off. Sophia had not expected a normal wedding—not that she knew a great deal about normal weddings. She had expected a brief ceremony with only her and Viscount Darleigh and the clergyman present. Oh, and one or two witnesses, perhaps Mr. Fisk and Mr. Handry. But suddenly it was to be a real wedding after all. There were to be guests and a best man—the Duke of Stanbrook—and someone to give her away. Lord Trentham had offered last evening and she had accepted. He terrified her—and did not. She had not quite figured him out yet. He looked like a fierce, dour warrior, yet he could catch Lord Darleigh up in a bear hug and gaze at his new wife sometimes as though the sun rose and set upon her. She suspected he was a man who felt most comfortable hidden behind the mask of fierceness so that his tender side would not be on public display and open to ridicule or hurt.
She might have sketched a caricature of him if she had disliked him. But she did not. She was only a little afraid of him.
He was indeed pacing the hall at the bottom of the staircase. He came to a halt when he saw them descending, his booted feet slightly apart, his hands clasped at his back, his posture ramrod straight, like a soldier on parade, not quite at ease. His eyes passed over his wife and his sister with obvious approval and then came to rest upon her.
“Well, lass,” he said, “you are looking very fetching indeed. It is a pity Vince will not be able to see you.”
She paused two steps from the bottom. The other two ladies were down already. Lord Trentham took two strides toward her, and his eyes were only just above the level of hers as he gazed into them with a look that surely must once have had his soldiers quaking with terror.
“He is very precious to me,” he said softly.
He continued to look at her, and she almost retreated to the third stair. But she held her ground and lifted her chin.
“He is going to be even more precious to me,” she said. “He is going to be my husband.”
There was a beat more of eye-searching on his part, and then he smiled and really looked quite unexpectedly handsome.
“Yes, he is,” he said. “And again I say it is a pity he can’t see you this morning. You look like a little elf.”
At least she did not look like a mouse on her wedding day.
“The carriage is outside waiting, Hugo,” Lady Trentham said.
She and Miss Emes were to accompany them to the church. Mrs. Emes had left earlier with Mr. Philip Germane, Lord Trentham’s uncle, who, Sophia suspected, was courting Mrs. Emes.
Lord Trentham handed Sophia into the carriage and insisted that she take the seat facing the horses beside his wife.
This was it, she thought. Her wedding day. A hot summer day. The sky was deep blue with not a cloud visible. No bride could ask for anything better.
Sophia turned her head to the side as the carriage rocked on its springs and moved forward. She did not want to engage in conversation. She wanted to … to feel like a bride, to put aside all her misgivings, to be excited and only a little anxious, but in a good way.
Lady Trentham had come to her last evening and explained about tonight. Humiliatingly, considering the fact that she was twenty, Sophia had had little idea. Lady Trentham had assured her that it sounded a great deal worse—more embarrassing, more painful, more utterly terrifying—than it was.
“Indeed,” she had said, her cheeks a rosy red, “I will be going to Hugo for the fourth night of our marriage when I leave you, Miss Fry, and really I can hardly wait. It must be … No, it is, beyond any doubt at all, the most glorious thing in the whole wide world. You will see. You will soon come to welcome it.”
Sophia thought she might be right. For her very deepest, most secret dream … Well, she had not shared that at the Barton Coombs assembly. How could she? She had been talking to a man.
The man she was about to marry.
Lady Trentham took her hand and squeezed it.
They were turning into Hanover Square.
Vincent was having all kinds of second thoughts, which meant, he supposed, that by the time he had finished with them they would be thirty-sixth or fifty-eighth thoughts.
He really ought not to be thinking at all.
Except that trying not to think was no more effective than trying to hold back the tide would be.
It had turned into a proper wedding with guests at the most fashionable church in London, yet his mother and grandmother and sisters did not know about it. They did not even know his bride. He did not really know her either, though, did he? They were virtually strangers.
He did not even want to be married.
Except that if he must marry—and he would have no peace from his relatives until he did—he would just as soon it be Sophia. He actually did like her—or thought he did.
He did not know her.
Or she him.
Yet today was their wedding day.
And in some perverse way—thank God!—the thought excited him. His life was about to change, and perhaps he would change with it—for the better.
“Do you have the ring?” he asked George, who was seated beside him in the front pew of the church.
“I do,” George said. “Just as I did when you asked three minutes ago.”
“Did I?”
“You did. And I still have it.”
His wedding day. His best man was beside him. His friends were behind them. Although they were not talking loudly, some of them were whispering, and he could hear the rustle of their movements and the occasional cough. He could smell candles and traces of incense and that cold stone and prayer book smell peculiar to churches. He knew the great organ was going to play.
There was to be a wedding breakfast afterward at Hugo’s, a mildly terrifying thought even though he would be eating with friends. He did not like taking his meals in public.
And there was to be a wedding night at Stanbrook House. It had all been arranged without any consultation with him. Imogen was going to stay at Hugo’s after the breakfast, and George was going to spend the night at Flavian’s lodgings. Vincent and Sophia were to have Stanbrook House to themselves for the night, apart from servants, of course.
That at least he could look forward to.
“Do you have the ring?” he asked. “No, forget it. I have asked you before, have I not? Is she late, George? Will she come?”
“She is two minutes from being late,” George assured him. “Indeed, I do believe she is two minutes early. Here come Lady Trentham and Miss Emes.”
But Vincent had heard the slight commotion at the back of the church for himself. And he heard the clergyman clear his throat. He rose to his feet.
The great organ began to play, and it was too late for seventy-second thoughts. He was about to get married.
She and Hugo would be making their way along the nave toward him. His bride. He could hear the slow, steady click of Hugo’s boot heels on stone. He wished he could see her. Ah, he wished he could. She would be wearing new clothes. Pretty clothes. Would they make her feel better about herself?
He smiled though he could not see her. She must see that he was welcoming his bride. How many second thoughts had plagued her this morning?
And then he smelled her, that faint soap scent he had begun to associate with her. And he felt the slight warmth of a human presence on his left side.
The anthem faded away.
“Dearly beloved,” the clergyman said.
Ah, let him be adequate. Let him be a worthy husband for this damaged little waif he was marrying. Let him be a good companion and friend. Let him be a decent lover. Let him protect her from harm all the days of their lives. She was blameless. She had come to his rescue that night of the assembly and would have suffered her punishment for the rest of her days if he had not persuaded her to marry him. Let her never regret marrying him. Let him cherish her. Let him put aside second and ninety-second thoughts from this moment on. He was in the process of getting married. Let him be married, then, and glad of it. Let him never, even for a single moment, allow himself to feel regret, whatever the future held. Let him cherish her.
He had spoken his vows, he realized, without remembering a word. She had spoken hers without him hearing a word. He had taken the ring and slid it over her finger without fumbling or dropping it. And the clergyman was telling them that they were man and wife.
And it was done.
There was a murmuring from the pews.
There was still the register to sign. All would not be legal and official until that was done. Sophia slid an arm through his and guided him to the vestry without hauling him. He had noticed that during their walk together in Barton Coombs. Very few people of his experience could trust him to follow slight cues.
The clergyman did not expect him to be able to sign his name, but of course he could. He sat before the register, and George handed him the quill pen and guided his hand to the beginning of the line where he would write. He scrawled his name and stood.
Sophia signed her name followed by the witnesses—George and Hugo. And then she slipped an arm through his again and led him back into the church. The organ began a joyful anthem and they proceeded the short distance across the front of the church and then along the nave. Vincent could sense his friends there. He smiled from left to right.
“Lady Darleigh,” he said softly.
“Yes.” Her voice was a little higher pitched than usual.
“My wife.”
“Yes.”
“Happy?” he asked. It was probably the wrong question.
“I don’t know,” she said after a short pause.
Ah, honesty.
They walked on in silence, and then he felt a different quality to the air, and she drew him to a halt as they stepped out through the church doors into the fresh air outside, and the sound of the organ receded somewhat.
“There are steps,” she said.
Yes, he remembered that from when he came in.
“Oh, and there are people.”
He could hear them, talking, laughing, whistling, even cheering. There were always people gathered outside St. George’s, he had been told, to watch society weddings.
“They have come to see the bride,” he said, smiling and lifting his free hand in acknowledgment of the greetings. “And today that is you.”
“Oh, and there are two men,” she said.
“Two men?”
“They are grinning,” she said, “and they are both holding handfuls of … oh!”
And Vincent felt at least two light, fragrant missiles flutter past his nose. Rose petals?
“No point in c-cowering there, Vince,” Flavian called.
“Come and bring your bride to your carriage. If you dare,” Ralph added.
“An open barouche,” Sophia said. “Oh, it is all decorated with flowers and ribbons and bows.”
Vincent could feel the heat of the sun.
“Shall we go down?” he suggested. “Those are two of my friends. Are they armed with rose petals?”
“Yes,” she said and laughed—that light, pretty sound he had heard a few times before. “Oh, dear, we are going to be covered.”
She told him where the steps were and then clung to his arm as they hurried the short distance to the barouche, making it seem that he was leading her rather than the other way around.
“We are there,” she said as rose petals rained about them and upon them and Vincent could hear that their other guests had emerged from the church.
But instead of scrambling inside the barouche without further ado, she waited while he located the lowest step and offered his hand. She set her own in it and climbed inside. He followed her in and made sure he sat beside her, not on her.
The church bells were ringing.
“Well, Lady Darleigh.” He felt for her hand and squeezed it tightly in his own. She was wearing soft gloves. “Does it look as much like a wedding as it feels?”
“Yes.”
He heard the door of the barouche close and felt the dip of the springs as the coachman climbed back to his perch.
“Are you overwhelmed?”
“Yes.”
“Sophie,” he said, “don’t be. You are a bride. All eyes are upon you today.”
“That is precisely the trouble,” she said, laughing breathlessly.
“Describe what you are wearing,” he told her.
She told him, starting with her straw bonnet. Before she got to her feet, the barouche rocked into motion and moved away from the church—with an unholy din.
“Oh!” she cried.
He grimaced and then grinned. An old trick, one in which he had participated more than once as a boy. “I believe we have all the utensils from someone’s old, derelict kitchen trailing behind us. Now you are really on view.”
She did not reply.
“You sound charmingly clad, Sophie,” he said, having to raise his voice above the din. “Is everyone watching back there?”
He felt her turn to look.
“Yes.”
“May I kiss you?” he asked her. “It is what they are all hoping for.”
“Oh,” she said again.
He took the single word as assent. He knew she really was overwhelmed, and the realization made him feel tenderly toward her.
He reached across himself with his free hand and found her face beneath the stiff little brim of the straw bonnet she had described. He cupped her soft cheek with his hand, found the edge of her mouth with the pad of his thumb, lowered his head, and kissed her.
It was more of a real kiss this time, though he made no attempt to deepen it. His lips were slightly parted. Hers were full and soft and warm and moist—she must have just licked them.
He felt a stirring in the groin and a pleasant anticipation of bed tonight.
Even over the hideous din of several kettles and pans or whatever the devil was being dragged along the road behind them, he could hear a rousing cheer.
“Sophie.” He lifted his head but did not remove his hand from her cheek. “If you cannot tell me you are happy, can you at least assure me that you are not unhappy?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “I am not unhappy.”
“Or sorry? You are not sorry?”
“No,” she said. “I do not have the courage to be sorry.”
He frowned.
“I am only sorry that you may be sorry,” she told him.
He had expected that any woman he married would be the one who might regret doing it, for he was blind and could not live a fully normal life or see and appreciate her. But this bride, he realized, was almost totally lacking in self-esteem, even now when she had been clothed well and expensively and when her hair had been properly styled and she was Viscountess Darleigh.
He had known she was damaged. Perhaps he had not realized how deeply. Was she too damaged? But he remembered her making a daisy chain and laughing as he tried to loop it over her head. He remembered her joking about cats when he played his violin. He remembered the absurd story of Bertha and Dan they had concocted on the way to London and her admission that she sketched caricatures of people she knew.
“Never,” he told her. “I will never be sorry. We will find contentment with each other. I promise.”
How could one promise such a thing?
But he could promise to try. He had no choice now anyway. They were married. And he would do all in his power to restore her self-esteem. If he could do that for her, he would be contented.
“I suppose,” he said, sitting back in his seat, “we are attracting quite an audience.”
“Oh, yes,” she said—and laughed.
He squeezed her hand.
